


No going back

by i_gaze_at_scully



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst with a Happy Ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-13
Updated: 2019-01-13
Packaged: 2019-10-09 15:53:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,020
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17409803
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/i_gaze_at_scully/pseuds/i_gaze_at_scully
Summary: It isn't a problem until it isScully and Mulder get together in season 2.





	No going back

“This is a bad idea,” she breathes, lips half an inch from his and fingers knotted in his hair. 

 

“God I missed you,” he whispers back, unadulterated need pouring from him on baited breath. “Scully, I missed you so much.”

 

With the smallest of whimpers, she closes the gap, firmly planting her lips on his. She moves them in time to wandering hands, bracketing his face and scratching at his scalp, cupping his jaw and clutching him to her. 

 

_ How could this be a bad idea?  _  He thinks. She’s safe and warm in his arms, and if he could get any closer to her he would. He spent a month without her, a month with a part of him floating somewhere in the abyss and the other parts slowly crumbling. He’s never letting her go again. 

 

 

–––––

 

It isn’t a problem until it is. In fact, it’s the opposite of a problem. She tentatively, hesitantly opens herself to him. She gives an inch and he takes what she offers, inch by inch, careful not to drive her away. She leaves in the night and he doesn’t push the next morning. She stays with him, and he brings her coffee in bed. She invites him to stay with her and he puts a bouquet of lilies on her kitchen table before she wakes. It warms his heart to see her smile when she breathes them in.

 

“Melissa gave me her read on you, by the way,” she says one night, tracing lazy circles on his chest. “Told me about your vigilance when I was gone.” His heart clenches at the memory, and he stays silent, smoothing down her hair in gentle strokes. 

 

“She said you’d do anything.” She tilts her head to him, nipping at his earlobe. “For me.”

 

“I would,” he affirms. “I hope you know that.”

 

She places a barely there kiss to the corner of his mouth with an affectionate hum, and he realizes that this is the happiest he’s ever been. 

 

It isn’t a problem until it is. 

 

–––––

 

Heart at a full gallop, throat half closed, trigger finger straining in his stiff hand, he watches his sister traverse the space between safety and danger. Scully jogs to him in a daze, and he loses his focus for a moment. 

 

“Scully you all right?” 

 

She tries, tells him she’s okay, and he tries, turns his attention back to his sister. He couldn’t lose Scully again, he just couldn’t, especially not now. So he loses Samantha again instead. And he realizes then that Scully was right. It was a bad idea. Tied to him as she is now, inextricably and totally, she is in more danger than ever.  _ She said you’d do anything.  _ When Samantha goes over the bridge, his promise echoes in his ears. Something akin to regret fills his chest, weighs him down like bricks. 

 

Scully saves him, but won’t meet his eye in the hospital. 

 

The next day, it’s 1:30 AM when she stumbles through his door, fumbling with the key for a solid minute beforehand. With tear tracks and red eyes, she asks him if he regrets it. When he doesn’t answer, she bites down hard on her quivering lip as unpermitted tears fall. He tries to hold her hand, to communicate his confliction, but she pulls away. She leaves him alone in the dark, where drums his head against the door in her wake. Maybe this is a better idea.

 

–––––

 

He tries. He sees her every day, and while they aren’t cold, there’s a schism he can’t seem to mend. Even when things are dire, when death comes knocking and one pulls the other away from the door in the nick of time, things don’t return to normal. 

 

When he accuses her of spying, revokes his trust in her, he’s sure that that’s the end of it. He’s sure, even though he was sick, even though he came back from the dead, that there was no going back now. Maybe there never was a back, not from that first plunge. Maybe this was always where they’d end up, bound loosely together, bound but broken. 

 

They don’t discuss it until Melissa dies. Melissa dies and he cradles Scully in the hospital till there are no more tears left to cry. She kisses him for the first time in weeks through dry sobs and he pulls back, holds her face in his hands. “Scully, I’m so sorry. I’m sorry for everything. You deserve so much better.”

 

She closes her eyes, brings her hands to his wrists. She doesn’t push him away, resting instead in that suspended moment with him. “I need you with me Mulder,” she whispers finally. “I can’t do this without you.”

 

“Anything, Scully. Anything,” he promises. He renews his promise, because they are stronger together. They can face anything together, and he needs her as much-if not more-as she needs him. He leans his forehead against hers until her breathing evens, slows. He takes her home and wraps himself around her till morning. She grips his hand to her chest, in and out of sleep as nightmares drag her waking pain into the unconscious. He holds her, because it’s all he can do. He holds her because he loves her.

 

She loves him too.

 

–––––

 

A united front, they tackle the evils of the world anew, hellbent on righting the wrongs against them. When cancer rears its ugly head, Mulder finds the cure and exposes them all. Scully lives, and they bring the whole thing down from the very top. All it takes is a single bullet, and cancer man’s death is the catalyst for the project’s destruction. When they learn of Emily Sim, it’s only a matter of course that she becomes their sole mission. They devote themselves to her, to each other, and to as bright a future they can manage in a dark world. With one fewer shadow to engulf them, they’re able to stand in the light, bring some semblance of peace to the world and to their daughter. They press forward, together, unbreakable. 

 

There never was any going back. 


End file.
